E3 2017 Expectations

We are a month off from E3. E3 is a big time for gamers, while simultaneously not being much of anything at the end of it. We expect big announcements and stuff, and usually what we end up getting is “in a year or 2 or 5 you’ll be able to play this!” sort of announcements. I usually turn out not too excited after E3 is done, even though I REALLY enjoy watching everything that comes out of it every year. I watch all the conferences (usually twice since I post about them afterwards), I watch all the trailers that weren’t shown at the conferences, several streams showing stuff on the floor… I’m an E3-holic.

I want to write this now rather than later, because if I wait rumors will pop up and this kind of post won’t mean much. “Hey there’s these rumors so that will be my predictions lol”. Wow much insight and thought. Instead of just naming random shit and calling them predictions, I’ll talk about my overall expectations for each of the presentations.

So yeah, let’s talk about everyone having a presentation there at least. I’m not gonna try to guess what EVERY company will show.

Random wish

You know what I want to see? A “third-party” presentation. Instead of Bethesda and EA and Ubisoft having their own things, E3 should set up a big presentation for all the non-console companies to go in, have 10-20 minutes to themselves and make their announcements. That would be a HUGE thing for E3. Instead of third-parties butting in on presentations for other companies, or announcements just coming at random, they’d each have their own “thing” here. Make it a few hours long so all the companies can do something there.

That’s definitely something E3 organizers should consider. Imagine the (native) ad money for a several hours long show that a LOT of people will watch all the way through, why aren’t they doing that already? Anyways…

General prediction

Just the usual stuff that I will complain about from every company: Not enough gameplay, not enough actually-new announcements, badly-acted multiplayer demos, game companies trying to be cool but failing… You know the drill, it’s E3.

One thing that is important at this point of 2017 though is: WE NEED RELEASE DATES. There’s nearly nothing that has release dates for the rest of the year past June, it’s really odd. I hope companies go crazy on actually telling us what’s coming out the rest of the year.

Bethesda

This image is central to Bethesda’s E3, as it was on the E3 press invites:
So they actually might have things to show here, considering that image. My expectations with them are fairly simple: lots of DLC. DLC for Doom (please be single player), Fallout 4, Dishonored 2 and Prey. Also a release date for Quake Champions, which I’m pretty excited about (I played a bit of the closed beta, it was fun). There’s one part of the image that I don’t fully know what it is. It’s Elder Scrolls, but is it for Online, or 6, or both? I don’t know.

The image includes 2 “under construction” zones, which will be 2 “new” announcements. One of them is almost definitely Wolfenstein: The New Colossus (which I am excited for, moreso if it’s more like The Old Blood). I’m going under the impression that the Elder Scrolls part of the image is for both Online and ES6 if they’re announcing it. That means there’s 1 more prediction to make, so I’ll be super bold here: a Wet sequel! … Yeah okay that’s not happening. A more possible prediction would be Evil Within 2, but I hope that’s not it. I’d like to see a new IP of some genre Bethesda isn’t known for, or doing something really unexpected like Wet 2, because why not? But I doubt it.

Expectations: A repeat of last year with 1 or 2 new things, basically. Less pointless than Ubisoft and EA.

Ubisoft

Just Dance with a dumb dance number again because trying to make memes is more important than making sense, a new Tom Clancy thing that will take 2 years to release and won’t be super noteworthy, a new Assassin’s Creed that will suck… you know, all the basic stuff. Oh and Far Cry 5, which will suck because it won’t be Blood Dragon. I’m not expecting anything surprising OR interesting from Ubisoft anymore. I stopped expecting anything from them a long ass time ago. And we’ll have Aisha Tyler being unfunny again, because why not. She’s pretty much an E3 tradition at this point.

Hey at least there’s gonna be yet another South Park trailer for like the third year in a row (2 years ago might have been on the Microsoft stream rather than Ubisoft’s). One of the few things that would be a surprise would be if they finally showed something about Beyond Good & Evil 2.

Expectations: shit as usual

EA

Well they’ll definitely show the new Star Wars Battlefront, so that’s something. Something lame, but something nonetheless. Last year they announced announcements for other Star Wars projects, so maybe we’ll get those announcements here. Otherwise… Sportsball games, some shitty shit, and an audience wondering why they bothered having a presentation. EA’s presentations are always a huge waste of time.

The one thing I want from EA this year is the same thing I’ve wanted from them for a long time now: Fight Night Round 5. FNR4 was great, I played the demo for Champion and wasn’t impressed. So a new one that’s more in line with 4 would be awesome. Am I predicting this though? Nah. They’ve been doing the UFC thing recently (and I can’t say I’m really a fan of those), and they’re probably continuing with that sadly.

EA had nothing to show last year, they’ll have nothing to show this year either. I expect 3 pointless “working in offices” videos from them this year, they love these pointless wastes of time that are completely devoid of value.

Expectations: shit as usual

Sony

And now on to the Big 3. Sony is the one I have the least idea what they’ll do. It’s usually not much though. For sure we’ll see a bit more God of War and Days Gone and Knack 2 (why) and Uncharted DLC and Last of Us 2 and that Quantic Dream shit, so nothing exciting (God of War is still on my radar despite my usual dislike for the series, but that’s it). Also maybe Spiderman. We’ll definitely see something for Death Stranding. Maybe this time it’ll actually be a game instead of just weird cutscenes… no idea why people are hyped for this before seeing gameplay. Otherwise… who knows? I hear Sucker Punch is making something new so that could be hype. I have real trouble predicting what they might actually do that’s unannounced because Sony themselves probably don’t know. I do feel there’s gonna be a cool surprise release on Sony’s side, but there’s already so much already-announced stuff that still isn’t released that I’m not expecting too many new things from them.

I do expect a small handful of random multiplatform third-party stuff, but that’s to be expected from Sony. The biggest reveal of the presentation won’t be PS4 exclusive.

Expectations: keeping them super low but there’s a small chance they’ll surprise us. People will be super-hyped for it anyways because they like bad games like Last of Us and whatever crap Quantic Dream is making… good for them I guess.

Microsoft

Scorpio, Scorpio, Scorpio. We’ll have videos of devs saying how awesome it is, footage of games that look no different from normal Xbone games but they’ll tell us it is, a price point and release date for a pointless black box… and not a single exclusive game announced for it OR the regular Xbone (or both), because Microsoft is about multiplatform development now, and the PC will get whatever games are announced here. As for game announcements… I’m saying Halo 6 (with announced return of the local co-op mode) and a fifth Xbone Forza because why not at this point… And much like Sony I don’t really know what else to predict, but for different reasons… mostly because Microsoft doesn’t tend to produce much game-wise anymore. What I want is Battletoads, but I know that’s never happening. Phil Spencer will just keep teasing me.

Finally they’ll show Crackdown 3 again after it being weirdly absent last year (if it hasn’t been silently canned), Sea of Thieves will continue looking boring (why, Rare?), and an indie showcase that will show Cuphead again but still no release date for it because that game is never coming out.

And yeah, third-party galore since MS have probably not much to show themselves. If there’s any huge awesome reveal, it’s 100% sure not to be Xbone/Scorpio exclusive either way.

Expectations: My expectations for this one are supremely low, and honestly I don’t really care since the Xbone is a dead platform anyways, even with Scorpio incoming… unless they reverse their stance on exclusives (not like it really had exclusives BEFORE they decided “no more exclusives”)

Nintendo

I keep seeing braindead morons saying Nintendo isn’t going to E3… so tell me, what part of “biggest booth at the show, a spotlight stream for game information and announcements, a stream every day from the E3 showfloor with gameplay demos, and also 2 game tournaments” seems like them “not going”? People are fucking dumb.

Nintendo aren’t doing a standard presentation in front of non-gamer journalists again, surprising no one. However they are having an online presentation (Nintendo Spotlight) like they did 2 and 3 years ago (last year was weird). It will only show Switch games according to what they announced, focused on 2017. With a large focus on Mario Odyssey including a release date probably. What else am I expecting? Release dates for Xenoblade 2 and Fire Emblem Warriors are probably happening (devs and Nintendo are still insisting on 2017 for Xenoblade 2 worldwide). More Splatoon 2 info is definitely gonna be there.

For what we DON’T know… I am 92% sure we will see what Retro Studios has been working on for the last 3+ years. There’s rumors of 2 separate Metroid games coming (one of which would be from Retro). I don’t like believing rumors, but it does feel to me that Retro Studios have been working on Metroid, whatever it may end up being (I hope for a 2D or Other M-but-better game, expecting something more akin to Metroid Prime). We’ve heard nothing from them since 2014, so I’ll make a fairly easy prediction: whatever they’re announcing will be given, at most, an early 2018 release date. I’d rather they work on reviving StarTropics but that’s not happening.

Otherwise I have no idea what Nintendo will be showing there, but I can make some guesses. Smash Bros, PROBABLY a remaster of 4, hopefully with new content. I’d say add all the 3DS-exclusive levels, add a couple new characters and levels, include all DLC. There are chances of a new Smash but I would not expect that. The other guess is something that’s been rumored for a while, that being Pokemon Star… I’m fairly sure it’s real. There’s still big rumors going on for a Mario x Rabbids RPG crossover, so if that’s real it might be shown here (it still sounds like such a weird idea to be believable). My final guess is gonna be vague, but simple: A big reveal for 1 “headlining” game of 2018 (kinda like how Mario, Zelda and Splatoon 2 are the big headlining games of 2017) and a vague “you’ll learn about more 2018 games in January” announcement. Might be Retro Studio’s title, might be something else, might be both. And obviously there’s also gonna be an indie showcase, with release dates for some of the things from the Switch reveal.

Then there’s the Treehouse stream from the E3 showfloor, they’ll show stuff from the spotlight presentation plus some 3DS stuff. Very happy they’re slowly phasing out the 3DS finally and relegating it to the stream fewer people will watch. The less they talk about it the better. But yeah, it’s nice to have this live, on-the-go thing every day of E3.

And they’re having tournaments for Splatoon 2 and Arms, so that’s probably gonna be fun to watch, especially Arms since it sounds like it’ll be wacky on stage.

Expectations: This is the one we know will at least have something absolutely huge (Mario), and has potential straight up to be good. Still expecting disappointment… you know, just in case.